MEDIA DECODER; An Advertising Initiative With Bilingual Appeal

By TANZINA VEGA

Published: October 1, 2012

Comcast Spotlight, an advertising unit of Comcast. The initiative will be called Telemundo Plus and will allow advertisers to show ads in either language throughout the NBCUniversal, Comcast and Telemundo networks.

A major part of the strategy includes extracting the vast amounts of user data the companies own, said Andrew Ward, group vice president of Comcast Media 360, a division of Comcast Spotlight. Mr. Ward said the company was able to combine subscriber data with third-party data like voter registration files and census data, as well as data from companies like Experian, which collects credit scores, and Polk, which collects automobile data.">

In a move to increase its reach with both English- and Spanish-speaking Hispanic consumers, Telemundo Media will announce on Monday a new advertising platform in conjunction with Comcast Spotlight, an advertising unit of Comcast. The initiative will be called Telemundo Plus and will allow advertisers to show ads in either language throughout the NBCUniversal, Comcast and Telemundo networks.

A major part of the strategy includes extracting the vast amounts of user data the companies own, said Andrew Ward, group vice president of Comcast Media 360, a division of Comcast Spotlight. Mr. Ward said the company was able to combine subscriber data with third-party data like voter registration files and census data, as well as data from companies like Experian, which collects credit scores, and Polk, which collects automobile data.

For now, advertisers will be able to specify an audience by neighborhood, but the aim is to approach the same level of precision available to marketers who run digital campaigns.

"What we want to do is maximize relevance," Mr. Ward said. "When you put the right message in front of a right audience that level of engagement comes through."

Dan Lovinger, executive vice president for advertising sales at Telemundo Media, said the new platform would help advertisers reach Hispanic audiences of all types. "Not just Spanish-dominant speakers, not just English-dominant Hispanics, but all of them," Mr. Lovinger said. "When you look across Hispanic Americans, the 50 million don't all look alike, speak alike or come from the same socioeconomic platform."

Advertisers will be able to focus their ad buys on specific geographic areas of Latinos, like a neighborhood of English-speaking Hispanics in New York or a neighborhood of Spanish-speaking Hispanics in California. Advertisers will also be able to show an English-language ad during Spanish-language shows and a Spanish-language ad during English-language programs.

So far, just a handful of advertisers have signed up to test the platform, including T-Mobile and Toyota. A third advertiser declined to be named, and representatives for Toyota were unavailable to comment. Toyota has run ads for its Camry in both languages using the new platform, said Chris Traina, a spokesman for Conill, the agency that worked on the ads.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.

PHOTO: A commercial for the Toyota Camry in English and Spanish that appears on English-language stations.

Comcast Spotlight, an advertising unit of Comcast. The initiative will be called Telemundo Plus and will allow advertisers to show ads in either language throughout the NBCUniversal, Comcast and Telemundo networks.

A major part of the strategy includes extracting the vast amounts of user data the companies own, said Andrew Ward, group vice president of Comcast Media 360, a division of Comcast Spotlight. Mr. Ward said the company was able to combine subscriber data with third-party data like voter registration files and census data, as well as data from companies like Experian, which collects credit scores, and Polk, which collects automobile data.">